


Five Times Cecil And Carlos Celebrated Shabbat

by Prismatic Bell (Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: 5 Times, F/M, Family, Jewish Character, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), M/M, POCecil, Religion, Shabbat, Spoilers through Episode 48, Strexcorp, Strexcorp is Evil, a bit angsty, tw: antisemitism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor/pseuds/Prismatic%20Bell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five different Shabbat celebrations, in light times and in dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Cecil And Carlos Celebrated Shabbat

**Author's Note:**

> Notes for readers not familiar with Hebrew: the diphone /ch/ is pronounced with a hard H, almost like you're clearing your throat (this appears most commonly in the English-speaking world in the transliteration “Chanukkah”). There is no “ch” as in the English “church” in Hebrew.
> 
> I didn't shy away from using Hebrew in this story; I spent fifteen months living in the midst of the Jewish branch of my family (my sister now jokes that I'm a “good little Jew” because I do things like asking if Saltines are chametz even though I don't celebrate Pesach), and this is in fact pretty much what Shabbat sounds like in the Jewish homes I've been honored to share Shabbat and seder with. There are no direct translations for most of the words in Hebrew (either that, or the words have been adopted as loanwords), but explanations for each are available in the notes at the end. 
> 
> Warnings because Strex are a bunch of assholes who think any religion that doesn't believe in the Smiling God is inefficient and doesn't need to be respected in any way. If antisemitism is a trigger for you, please note that there is some here and gauge whether you're up to reading this. My feelings won't be hurt if you change your mind; there's a section I rewrote three times because what I was putting a bunch of innocent characters through was incredibly uncomfortable.
> 
> Further notes: The “braces” Cecil wears are the kind that slide over the wrist and have small handles to stabilize someone with a mobility impairment, and may be worn for things as diverse as cerebral palsy, early-stage multiple sclerosis, and—yup—Lyme disease. (Am I the only one who remembers that?) I have my own headcanon for why he uses them, but it need not interfere with whatever headcanon you develop.
> 
> This Cecil is Eastern European Jewish and should not be confused with the Cecils from any of my other stories that feature a specifically-described Cecil.
> 
>  
> 
> Feedback is, as always, encouraged and appreciated!

The first time, Carlos is finishing a glass of water before he and Cecil go out for dinner.

There's a buzz, and then a click, and then a whirr. None of this is unusual; Cecil's apartment is pretty normal, as Night Vale goes, but every now and again it feels the need to make strange noises that Cecil chalks up to the Faceless Old Woman. 

But then a very young voice starts calling for Uncle Cecil, and that is definitely _not_ normal, not even a little bit, and so Carlos heads for the living room with his glass still in his hand.

The girl in the wheelchair has long black cornrows and Cecil's full lips, and sitting in her lap is a cookie sheet with a braided bread dough on it that Carlos recognizes. Cecil is sitting on the floor by the chair, looking distressed.

“—and he said he _can't_ make the challah because the oven isn't working but it's _Shabbat_ , Uncle Cecil, we've _got_ to have challah, Mom taught me how to do the braids and everything,” the little girl is saying, in one of those auctioneer's reels only kids ever seem to fully master. 

Later, Carlos will realize that bursting into uncontrolled laughter was far from the politest thing he's ever done. Later, he and Cecil will also laugh retelling the story of Janice and her first challah bread. Right now, though, he's doubled over and waving a hand at Cecil, who's asking with a dangerous amount of acid in his voice if something is funny, and the unnamed little girl who looks startled by the sudden outburst. Carlos shakes his head and takes in a deep breath, and then he thinks _the oven isn't working, what a disaster_ and he's off again, Cecil's eyes narrowing dangerously behind his glasses, and finally Carlos manages to wheeze “no, you don't understand—“

But there's nothing else he can do until he gets a breath again: “My dad is a rabbi and my mom's been telling me to find a nice Jewish boy for _years_ ,” he spits out, and then he and Cecil both start laughing while the little girl stares.

“Uncle Cecil?”

Cecil sobers. “Honey, I'd love to, but I don't have anything for din—“

Carlos waves a hand at him. “I have this great bean and rice recipe I've been waiting for an excuse to make,” he says. “I can have it done by the time the challah bakes if you can put together some salad.” 

It's not true. He has several great recipes that mesh with Cecil's dietary needs and at least two of them involve beans and rice, but he hasn't been waiting to make them. Cecil has cookbooks that are actually applicable to Night Vale foods, and Carlos has been making liberal use of them. But the little girl's face lights up and she zips off toward the kitchen with her challah in her lap as Cecil hoists himself to his feet with one brace and pulls Carlos close.

“Thank you,” he murmurs into Carlos' ear, and runs affectionate fingers through his hair. “Her mom's away a lot and Janice loves doing Shabbat, and it's . . . hard sometimes.”

“I didn't know you had—a sister,” Carlos answers, and noses at Cecil's ear to distract him from the _any other siblings_ that almost walked off his tongue. Cecil giggles and pulls his head away.

“You've met her,” Cecil says. “Eleanor. I introduced you in the Ralph's, remember?”

“Elea—Eleanor _Carlsberg_?” Carlos thinks about the tall and beautiful woman with the buzzed hair in the Ralph's and tries to imagine her with short and disheveled Steve. It doesn't work. “Your sister is—?”

“Ugh. Don't remind me,” Cecil answers, and pecks Carlos' cheek before heading for his buffet to pull out a pair of silver candlesticks. They look black and battered, and Cecil hunts for candles with a glance in Carlos' direction.

“I know they look awful,” he says. “They're old and the silver tarnishes if you _look_ at it. I've tried polishing them before.”

“No good, huh?”

Cecil shakes his head and pulls out a little tray and a cloth Carlos knows well. Carlos takes them neatly from Cecil's hands and heads for the kitchen.

“The little one's Janice, right?”

“Yes,” Cecil says, and follows him.

They set up the candlesticks, which Janice proudly lights as the only female in the house; wash the challah platter and plate Janice's fresh loaf, which—after HaMotzi is said and they take off the challah cover and all take their first bite—Carlos decides is at least as good as his mother's; and open a bottle of the lowest-alcohol content wine Cecil owns after they discover there is no grape juice in the house to bless the wine. Cecil reminds Janice, several times, that she can take only a sip. Janice wrinkles her nose at the glass and tells Cecil only crazy people would _want_ more than one sip. Carlos, who loves Cecil's tastes in cabernet, just smiles and shakes his head.

Then he puts a hand on Janice's head to recite the blessing for a daughter— _may you be like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah_ —and after he says amen he looks up to see Cecil staring at him. Carlos shrugs.

“I've got four sisters,” he says, and ruffles Janice's cornrows. “Dinner.” 

Janice stays after dinner. And a kids' movie Carlos has never seen called _Rainbow Brite and the Bridge of Eternal Void._ And a bath. Finally she ends up tucked into Cecil's spare room in a ruffly pink nightgown from one of the drawers in what Carlos has always assumed was a spare bureau, and Cecil is smiling apologetically up at him.

“I didn't know she was going to come,” he tells Carlos. “I'm sorry about the date.”

“Shabbat is for family,” Carlos tells him. “If you'd told me before I would've offered to light candles with you last week. I never thought I'd miss it until I wasn't in driving distance for my mother's anymore.”

“If you'd asked, I would've told you where the synagogue is,” Cecil answers. “A lot of the Jews in Night Vale don't have families particularly so they do a Shabbat dinner before the prayer service. I go, sometimes.”

Carlos winds his arms around Cecil's waist. “I'll remember that for next week,” he says, and they stand together in Cecil's mostly-darkened kitchen, the last little bits of the candles guttering in their old candlesticks. Over dinner, Cecil shared their story for Carlos: the great-grandparents living in Eastern Europe, the great-grandmother's sister leaving her candlesticks and chanukkiah behind when she boarded a black train; the flight to Sweden and then, after the war, to America, with the precious silver relics packed neatly between layers of clothes.

“Janice's mother has the chanukkiah,” Cecil finished, “and I have the candlesticks.”

“And when we light them and say our blessings,” Janice said, “we remember Aunt Rivka so nobody forgets.”

Carlos' family was lucky: they were already in America in the 1930s. He's never understood the people in his father's synagogue who talk about _never forgetting_ , like the atrocities of eighty years ago were yesterday. Tonight, seeing Cecil's and Janice's joyful but somehow solemn faces, he thinks he does.

Cecil runs his fingers through Carlos' hair. “Half-pint for your thoughts?”

Carlos shakes his head. “Your story tonight, that's all,” he says. “And how the weirdest thing I've run into in fourteen months in Night Vale is a loaf of challah.”

“We get a special exemption for religious purposes,” Cecil tells him. “You can keep flour for challah and matzoh and things like that if it's in a completely airtight container that has to be opened from the outside and you only keep eight ounces at a time. In case of snakes, you know. There's a form you have to fill out. I can get you one from City Hall. Or you can piggyback off mine for a couple of weeks, if you have things to back yourself up with. I know you're busy.”

“By 'things' do you mean my kippah?”

“That'll do,” Cecil agrees. “Anyway, that's how we make our challah. It's not so weird.”

“Not what I meant,” Carlos says, and tries to figure out how to explain that what's weird is that it's so _normal_. The Night Vale he knows is one of bloodstone circles and bleeding mushrooms and, occasionally, purple and black tentacles growing out of his toilet tank. It's not a place where he can say _kippah_ and get an agreeable _that'll do_ from someone who knows what a kippah is. Finally he shakes his head. “It's hard to explain. I just didn't expect to run into a Jewish community here, that's all.”

“We're taking over the world, you know,” Cecil says. “We've already infiltrated Hollywood.” 

He looks so serious that for a moment Carlos thinks he means it. Then he stifles a snort of laughter into his elbow and kisses Cecil's temple. 

“Well—I was going to say you should stay at mine tonight, but . . . “

Cecil shrugs his shoulders in a motion Carlos has long since decoded as raising his hands without actually having to let go of his braces. “I'm sorry,” he says. Carlos is pretty sure he's not imagining the disappointment on Cecil's face. “You can stay here, if you want.”

“Probably a good idea,” Carlos tells him. “I'm behind on my religious duties. Pleasing your partner is a mitzvah, you know.”

Cecil grins. “You _are_ a rabbi's son, aren't you,” he comments, and Carlos feels the light thump of a brace on his back as Cecil wraps his arms around Carlos' neck.

Carlos hasn't celebrated Shabbat since he came to Night Vale, and for the life of him he can't remember why.

\-------------------------------------

“I got my exemption,” Carlos says on a day that's gray and rainier than any desert has the right to be. “They'll apply it to up to three premade loaves at a time if I get the kind you freeze.”

Cecil rolls over in Carlos' arms, frowns, and reaches under the covers to move his leg. Then he snuggles back down contentedly against Carlos' chest. “You don't make your own?”

“Never learned,” Carlos tells him. It's true. He never has, although not for lack of trying. He just can't make things rise. It's one reason he's so fond of drop cookies. Cecil lets out an “mmm” and tucks his head under Carlos' chin.

“I was going to say, you should stay tonight,” Carlos continues. “I've got one rising and I haven't heard back yet if you can invite people who aren't Jewish. The police have been . . . busy.”

Neither of them say that the Sheriff's Secret Police have been cut to a skeleton crew and many of their members have disappeared. Cecil's fingers tighten in the fabric of Carlos' shirt all the same.

“It used to be okay,” Cecil answers. “I'd say it probably still is. I saw lasagne noodles on sale at the Ralph's the other day.”

“ _Regular_ lasagne noodles?”

“Regular lasagne noodles,” Cecil agrees, and Carlos frowns over his head. A StrexCorp representative offered him “excellent incentives” to hand over the parts of his notes they couldn't access. Carlos lied and told them he sent a box of notebooks to his home university and that it could take several months to get electronic copies back. None of it is true. The missing notes were in notebooks, it's true, but he's spent multiple nights transcribing them onto a flash drive and getting one of Cecil's interns to help him during the day, when his absence in the field would be noticed. The notebooks themselves are long destroyed, every page carefully burnt to stirred-up ashes. Carlos is the only one who knows where the flash drive is.

Carlos isn't sure what Strex wants with his notes. He doesn't care. They've brought in wheat byproducts and working clocks, and they need to get out of Night Vale. 

“Well,” he says, and strokes Cecil's hair. His fingers get tangled in tight curls, and he leaves them there. “It could just be you and me tonight, if you want. We can have dinner and go to temple. I've missed you.”

Strex has also brought in a mandatory 75-hour workweek. Carlos doesn't approve of a lot of what Strex has done, but that, he thinks, might be the worst.

“Beth Shalom was shut down,” Cecil murmurs, quietly. “There are chains on the doors.”

“All the doors?”

Cecil pulls back enough for Carlos to see his face, rather than answering aloud. Carlos thinks, hard.

“Well, we can go for a walk, then,” he suggests. “If your legs are up to it. I've got a big umbrella. This isn't acid rain or something, is it?”

“No,” Cecil says. “Just water. And airborne pollutants, of course. But the last rain we had that was anything other than water was in 1998. We're not actually _sure_ where all that blood came from, but—“

“Just water, then, great,” Carlos cuts in. There are some things he really doesn't want to know.

They have challah and wine, and Carlos makes a vegetable stir-fry to go over rice. Cecil loads the dishwasher and glances at Carlos' blown-glass candlesticks.

“Those are actually for Shabbat?”

“One of my sisters brought them back from Israel,” Carlos agrees. “She was going crazy because I was in college and I was using tea lights for Shabbat.”

“I'd go crazy too,” Cecil says. Then he bows in front of the candlesticks and blows them out. Carlos opens his mouth to protest. Cecil puts a finger to his lips.

Then he wraps them, candles and all, in newspaper and puts them in his messenger bag.

“Let's take a walk,” he says, and something in his tone suggests Carlos shouldn't argue.

They walk in circles for nearly twenty minutes before meandering casually past the chained doors and boarded windows of the beautiful little synagogue on Ouroboros. 

Someone has spray-painted _BELIEVE IN A SMILING GOD_ across the synagogue doors. 

Carlos squeezes Cecil's hand, tightly. Cecil suggests they cut across the lawn, and that if the spacial loop has straightened itself out they'll come out on First right away. 

They don't come out on First. Instead Cecil looks cautiously around, and then he walks under the crude wooden staircase at the back of the synagogue and pushes something in the wall. 

“You first,” he says. “Fast.”

Carlos doesn't ask questions—he crouches and makes his way into the tiny room in the wall. Cecil follows and sparks his lighter.

“Down the ladder. You'll have to take the messenger bag, I've got my braces.”

“How will you—“

“They'll help us down, just go,” Cecil whispers, and Carlos goes, heart in his throat.

It's a catacomb synagogue. Someone dug it out of the desert and bricked it up, and there is no entrance except the one they just came through. The room is lit only with electric camping lanterns.

This place was made to not be found.

There are half a dozen people in the room, faces pale with nerves and anticipation.

“Cecil's coming,” Carlos says, and two of them step forward to reach their hands up and take Cecil's hips and braces.

They number a total of nine when headcount is completed. “Rabbi Lopez has been missing for a week,” one of the others murmurs, and Carlos is about to comment that they don't have a minyan but they can still pray when a dark pair of legs appears on the ladder and they all go silent. Carlos raises a hand and shakes his head.

“Hello, Tamika,” he says, and he might be the only person in the room who's completely unsurprised when she drops off the ladder and walks in. There's a pack of jerky in Cecil's messenger bag, and Carlos offers it to her without comment. She takes it and begins to eat.

“She's thirteen,” he says, and then he pulls the precious glass candlesticks out of his bag. “Cecil had me bring these.”

There are murmurs of surprise and pleasure when he unwraps the candlesticks. One of the women Carlos doesn't know steps forward and gestures toward the candlesticks. Carlos nods and steps back. There's a crude altar made of a board laid across two sawhorses, and the woman sets the candlesticks on it. One of the other women brings out a loaf of challah. Still someone else has a bottle of wine.

There's a loud rattle, and they all go silent. Then thunder booms, and they relax.

“Lightning strike,” someone says, and then everybody looks at Carlos. He stares back at them, wondering what he's done this time.

“Cecil said you're a rabbi's kid,” someone else says. “Rabbi Lopez and Georgina are both missing.”

Carlos doesn't have any religious training beyond his bar mitzvah, certainly not enough to lead a service, and he says so. It won't change anything; when people need, their faces are always the same.

Finally he lets go of Cecil's hand and nods all of them toward the lit candlesticks.

“In my dad's synagogue, you can't bar mitzvah until you can lead a talk about a Torah story,” he says. “My bar mitzvah project was freedom from Egypt. That seems pretty appropriate today, doesn't it?”

There's a wave of murmured assent. Heartened, Carlos digs through his head to remember just what it was that he said in that large and lighted and beautiful room so many years ago, standing on a bimah with the Torah open in front of him instead of deep in a stinking basement.

“I'm not good at public talks. I'm actually pretty sure I froze up when I did my bar mitzvah project and somebody had to rescue me. But I can tell you this, if the pharaoh couldn't break us, some ignorant group of suits can't, either. That's what we're made for. We always keep going. There are Jews all over the world praying tonight for people who are having Shabbat like we are.”

The murmurs are louder. Carlos looks up from the candles. Cecil is crying quietly.

“Does anybody know what this week's parashah is?”

“I do,” says an old man with a very long beard. “We weren't able to get the ark, but we saved the Torah and the siddur.”

Carlos has a sudden nightmare image of someone from Strex smilingly lighting the Torah on fire amid a pile of tallit and Shabbat candlesticks and closes his eyes hard to make it go away. They're here, and safe, and that's the part that matters. Torah scrolls have been stored in worse places.

“Can you read it?”

“Better than you,” the old man says, and there's a wave of chuckles. Carlos is still too new to the temple to know what's so funny, but he recognizes a joke when he hears one, and smiles.

“We've got a minyan since Tamika's here,” Carlos says. There's another soft murmur that makes him realize Tamika doesn't belong to the synagogue, and then Cecil speaks up.

“I say, anyone walking through hardship with us who embraces us instead of turning away counts,” he says, and the murmuring stops. 

“Then let's start,” Carlos says. “And somebody rescue me if I screw it up.” More chuckles. Carlos takes the prayer book someone offers him. “ _Baruch atah Adonai—_

Nobody can hear them, here beneath the ground. Nobody StrexCorp would hire, anyway.

Somewhere, Carlos is sure, they are heard, as they sing their praises and pray to be free again.

\----------------------------------------------

If Carlos' understanding of the time behind the door is right, tonight is Shabbat.

Tonight is Shabbat, and Cecil is back in Night Vale.

No—not just back in Night Vale. In Night Vale in Carlos' apartment, if the vision Carlos had is right.

In Night Vale, in Carlos' apartment, quietly watering Carlos' plants and lighting his own old battered candlesticks on Carlos' counter, with two of Carlos' frozen challah rolls baked on a platter and a splash of wine in a glass.

It's still dangerous. Strex is still out there. But they won't touch Cecil. They won't dare.

Carlos looks around his own kitchen. It looks different—Cecil's beautiful stone dishes in the sink, Carlos' spice rack dug out of oblivion and placed neatly on the counter, Cecil's braces leaning in the corner by the breakfast nook and replaced with the cane he uses at home—and he realizes suddenly that Cecil has been living here in his absence. He wonders why, and then he sees a hazy image of Cecil's own apartment, splashed and streaked with gore. Somebody else moved in during Cecil's absence, and Carlos would bet that someone has strangely absent eyes and too many teeth above a yellow shirt and crisp black tie. Carlos has a name for the strange shade of yellow in the Strex uniforms: _malevolent octarine._ He said it to Cecil once and was met with a terrible smile and a nod of approval: _that's it exactly, my dear Carlos, that's exactly it. Like a migraine in your mind._

Little wonder Cecil has moved to a place that's still clean, since he has a key. 

It looks good, Carlos thinks. And his building has a perfectly serviceable elevator for Janice's chair. When he gets back—when—when—not if—he should ask if Cecil wants to just move in permanently while they look for a bigger place.

The yellow afghan from the back of Carlos' sofa is also missing. He doesn't care. He's pretty sure if he tells his mother they're taking the yellow out of the house for personal reasons she'll send him another. Another six, if he says _we_ , he thinks wryly.

There's a pan on the stove of something that looks like Cecil might have tried to recreate the recipe from their first Shabbat together, and Carlos feels his heart clench. Strex doesn't approve of people who don't eat meat, and Cecil's options have grown ever more limited. By the time they were separated, they'd taken to eating pasta and broccoli almost exclusively; Cecil brought home a box of his usual black bean burgers one day only to discover when he bit into one that they were a StrexCorp product “made with beef and pork.” 

Today should be a happy day: it's the first Shabbat in almost a year that the radio station is free.

Instead Cecil is lighting candles alone, surrounded by Carlos' things and a spectre of a Carlos who can't touch or speak to him, eating a boxed challah and a dish of seasoned rice and beans and corn.

The wine is probably awful, too, Carlos thinks. Alcohol is extraordinarily inefficient and although he recognizes the bottle—and he should, it has his own handwriting on it from Chanukkah—he wouldn't put it past Strex to have opened and salted the half a dozen bottles in Cecil's meager little store. Carlos is glad Cecil hid his candlesticks. He's pretty sure Strex would have smashed them the moment they could reasonably declare him missing if Cecil hadn't.

 _I know today is Shabbat,_ Carlos thinks, from his place in an unknowable desert an abandoned room atop a mountain his kitchenette in Night Vale. _And I know You're resting, like we're all supposed to do. But I can't rest until I find my way out of here, and I'm sure You understand when You know what's waiting for me and what it's costing me to stay here. And if I can keep going for today, I don't think it's too out of line to ask—please—_

Cecil raises his head and puts his hand on his shoulder. “Carlos?” he says, and Carlos clamps down as hard as he imagines an incorporeal figure can. He can almost feel Cecil's thumb across his fingers.

“I'm here,” he says. Cecil is still looking around the kitchenette, and Carlos rests his forehead on the nape of Cecil's neck. “Right behind you. Can you hear me?”

There's no indication Cecil can, but his hand hasn't moved, and Carlos wraps his other arm around Cecil's waist. “I love you,” he continues. “I love you, and I'm trying so hard to find a way back, Cecil, I'm going to find a way back to you.”

He feels Cecil's shoulders hitch and hears a quiet sob. “I love you,” Cecil says. “I know you can hear me. I know you're out there and I know you're fine and _I know you can hear me._ ”

Carlos doesn't like the tone in Cecil's voice: small and quiet and near hysteria. “I do,” he whispers in Cecil's ear. “I do hear you. And I'll be home as soon as I can, because I love you so much.”

“Shabbat shalom, Carlos,” Cecil whispers. Carlos kisses his cheek, and Cecil gasps and raises two fingers to the place Carlos' lips almost really touched. 

“Shabbat shalom, Cecil,” Carlos whispers back.

Cecil turns, and for a few precious seconds Carlos thinks Cecil actually _sees_ him, that even if he has to say _I'm in the desert, Cecil, I'm trying to find the door and I'm not really here_ they can at least really see each other and Carlos can tell Cecil he's lonely but apparently safe and otherwise fine.

Then Cecil lets out a wobbly sigh and walks right through him. 

Soon. Carlos is going to find the door, and walk through it, and the first thing after he's kissed Cecil senseless and washed the desert dust off his skin and kissed Cecil senseless he's going to find his way to the synagogue—either the one aboveground or the one below will do—and give thanks for even the semblance of a moment, enough time that Cecil could feel even if he couldn't see and hear—and then he's going to go home, really home, and hold Cecil and never let him go.

Love is a mitzvah, a special sacred gift, and Carlos never knew how much until he found himself in the middle of that lonely desert with nothing to hold onto but the promise of Cecil. 

He's not spending the High Holy Days in this forsaken desert. He's going home.

And then Cecil in his kitchen with a plate of rice and beans fades, and Carlos is alone again in that cracked and dirty room.

And he has a door to find. A door in a lighthouse.

And he'd better get moving.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Eleanor fixes the meal.

Janice makes the challah.

Steve sets the table.

Cecil brings the wine.

Carlos keeps his hand on Cecil's belt and tries not to feel too closed in, trapped, locked up, back between four walls.

Eleanor pulls out a pair of blown-glass candlesticks Carlos recognizes and sets them up alongside her own, a sleek obsidian she brought back from a trip to Hawai'i. 

“Janice, I want you to light Carlos' candlesticks,” she says, and lifts the little girl neatly out of her chair and onto a barstool. “Be careful with them.”

“Yes mama,” Janice chirps, and Cecil winds an arm around Carlos' waist.

Tomorrow could be dangerous. No—tomorrow _will_ be dangerous. 

Tomorrow, two armies will converge on Radon Canyon, and Carlos will be very glad he turned down StrexCorp by the time they're done. 

They're both led by women. Angry women. One of whom wears a claw around her neck as a trophy, and one of whom adopted Cecil as a father and nursed his burns and cuts and lash marks when he appeared spontaneously in her desert.

Carlos is _very_ glad he turned down StrexCorp.

Tonight they break bread and give thanks, and over matzoh ball soup (with imitation chicken broth made from vegetables, Eleanor was quick to point out before Cecil could hesitate) they talk about being together again. Eleanor found herself trapped outside of Night Vale for almost six weeks, and although she keeps reaching for Steve's hand Cecil doesn't so much as roll his eyes. Instead he presses a kiss to Carlos' temple and reaches for the pepper. 

“Y'know, Cecil,” Steve says, and Carlos can actually see Cecil bite his tongue when he looks up. He squeezes Cecil's hand; some other night they can argue, but tonight Carlos is glad for the civility. “If you're still looking for a place Barry down to the garage said he's selling before all the bullshit got started. Helen's having twins and they don't got the room.”

Cecil doesn't even make a crack about Steve being a mechanic, a job Night Vale treats much like the rest of the world treats sewage workers. Carlos asked about it once and got an ominous _he works with_ machines _, Carlos_ in reply. Instead he just says “where is he, again?”

“Old Town,” Steve says. “Three beds. Just remodeled the whole damn thing two years ago. There's a staircase, but it's got rails on both sides 'cause it's a spiral, not one of these deathtraps you see in all the stuff went up in the seventies.”

“It might be worth taking a look at,” Carlos says, and nudges Cecil gently under the table. Cecil “mm”s and takes a bite of soup. 

“The staircase could be a problem,” he says at last. “That's the problem with staircases, you can't trust them. The very best of them will tip you off into void and starlight at the slightest provocation.”

“I think we should give it the benefit of the doubt until we at least talk to it,” Carlos answers, trying to keep the snark out of his voice. Cecil rolls his eyes.

“My dear Carlos,” he says, and shakes his head. There's a long pause, and then: “I suppose it couldn't _hurt_. Maybe next weekend.” And then, unspoken, the implication: _once Barry is out of the so-called company picnic so he can identify the deer selling his house._

“Well, tell him I sent you, maybe he'll make you a better offer,” Steve suggests. Cecil just nibbles his soup and stays quiet.

After the soup comes a dish of enchiladas. Eleanor, well aware of Cecil's fear of being fed meat spurred by the tainted StrexCorp food, tells Cecil she has read every label and the food contains only beans and corn. Carlos grins.

“I don't think I've ever seen Mexican served at a Shabbat dinner that wasn't my mom's before,” he comments, and then he bites into one of them and closes his eyes in bliss. “This is amazing.”

“It started life as Cecil's recipe,” Eleanor says. “He could learn to use spices a little.”

Cecil elbows her. She elbows back, and Carlos smiles. Cecil so often seems strange—wonderful, but strange—that seeing something as normal as sibling roughhousing is a rare treat. 

“We learned about identifying chupacabras in school today,” Janice offers, and all of them immediately turn their attention to the differences between chupacabras and coyotes. Carlos reaches absently for Cecil's hand and kisses it. Cecil strokes Carlos' hair.

“So,” he says. “Any new news?”

It's a carefully-crafted neutral question; nobody is sure on whose side the few remaining Sheriff's Secret Police actually stand, and so until further information they are treated as Strex agents. Cecil shakes his head.

“Nothing,” he says. “But Koshekh is doing better. I took him his cat toys.”

“I think you spoil that cat more than me sometimes,” Carlos says, and gets one of Cecil's elbows in his side.

“I do not.”

“Oh, sure,” Carlos says, with a grin at Janice. She folds her hands under her chin and grins back. “He gets _toys_ and whatever he wants to eat and his own special _bed_ —“

“If you want to sleep somewhere that isn't my bed, we can arrange that,” Cecil shoots back, and Steve and Eleanor both let out the kind of “oh” that tells Carlos he's been served. 

“No, all I meant was—“

“Just stop while you're behind, Carlos,” Eleanor advises. “You already gave him an opening, you're done.”

If Carlos were in company with his team instead of Cecil's family, he'd mutter something smart about openings and let Cecil splutter his way out. Instead the thought makes his smile fade.

“Mommy, can we take a walk tonight, _please_?” Janice asks. Eleanor looks across the table at Cecil, who shakes his head almost imperceptibly.

“I think it's probably too hot,” he says, and Carlos understands it's not the weather Cecil is talking about. “But sometime soon, okay, sweetheart?”

Janice sighs. Carlos is a little stunned Janice is allowed to know about the secret room below the synagogue. Then again, he reminds himself, this is Night Vale, where there are Brownie Try-It badges for shooting a .22 rifle and throwing knives.

“When is Macy going to be home?”

“Soon,” Cecil says. “It's okay to be a little sad, sweetheart. I know you miss her.”

Carlos catches the hand squeeze under the table across from him. He reaches for Cecil's hand and does the same. Then he finds Janice's hand on the other side, and squeezes that. She squeezes back. 

He is afraid. Not of death; even if he survives every trap and monster Night Vale throws at him, death is, eventually, inevitable. Not even of losing Cecil, although that fear is bound up in the larger one that comes up every time he closes his eyes:

_What if they fail?_

Cecil was drugged and dragged from the station the first time, and to Carlos his descriptions of what came next sound like injection of sodium pentothal. That, Carlos thinks, was their first mistake; Cecil feels pain, but his tolerance is strong, and instead of frightening him, it only pissed him off more. 

But next time, Carlos thinks. Next time they won't stop at injecting him and throwing him in a room with office work. Next time could be anything. Next time could be the death of Cecil.

Next time could be the death of Night Vale.

 _I'm making a terrible habit of this,_ he thinks. _But if You can keep him safe tomorrow—_

Carlos eats with gratitude the tiramisu put in front of him. Janice suggests that if they can't take a walk, they should watch _Rainbow Brite_ , but all of her DVDs have been replaced with things like _A Child's Guide To Accounting_ and _Ten Easy Ways To Keep Books._

Carlos suggests a game instead, and Eleanor pulls out a carefully-hidden copy of Apples to Apples, and Cecil keeps picking Steve's cards and getting mad about it and finally throws his entire hand in Steve's face when he picks _Brown Eyes_ for _Alluring_ and Steve just laughs all the way through the next turn, and Carlos loses by a landslide. 

Tomorrow is frightening.

Tonight, they are together.

\-----------------------------

“We're done!” Carlos hollers. Inside, a loud cheer goes up.

Most of Night Vale is not Jewish. Beth Shalom is built to hold about a hundred people, and rarely tops half that. 

But most of Night Vale did not have their places of worship destroyed by a malevolent corporate entity, and so many of the people scrubbing and hammering and laying new carpet are friends and family and acquaintances with bloodstone circles or ties to the First Christian Church of Night Vale, which could as aptly name itself the only Christian church of Night Vale. 

There was almost a service last week, after the fences around the “company picnic” were shorted and people spilled out to taste blood.

Then the chains were broken off the synagogue doors, and the returning congregants were met with destruction and rotting pork.

But work-weary or not, Night Vale is a tight-knit community, and the gentiles of town watched the sobbing congregants angrily ripping out shredded carpet and picking out shards of window glass for only about twenty minutes before the first people came to help—with food, with water, with cleaning supplies and words of encouragement and fresh paint. Rabbi Lopez is there to sanctify the ark again before they bring the Torah scrolls from their hidden place underground and put them back where they belong, longing fingers reaching to touch kisses to the parchment from all sides. Big Rico is there with kosher pizza and salad for hungry and tired workers. 

Tamika and Dana show up with their people, and they swarm over every inch of the building, making sure not a spot of yellow paint or shred of pork remains and chasing away the few frightened Strex employees who try to approach, and then Nasr al-Mujaheed shows up with the entire football team in tow to paint and nail down fresh carpet so the first wave of workers can rest.

And now, today—only hours before Shabbat begins—Carlos has finished the last task: restaining the massive front doors.

“I don't know about you all, but I'm going to go home and shower for about a week, and then I'm coming back,” he says, and there's another cheer. 

Carlos means to be back well before Shabbat starts, but Cecil is too dirty for a bath and needs help for a shower, and help in the shower turns into An Incident that causes a disapproving Faceless Old Woman to scatter Carlos' pots and pans all over the kitchen, and by the time they're both in clean clothes with kippot on their heads and scrubbed fingernails Carlos finds it faster to have Cecil carry his braces so Carlos can just piggyback him back to the synagogue.

“We _really could_ drive,” Carlos puffs out. Cecil adjusts his hold on his braces so they don't hit Carlos in the shins.

“But then we couldn't walk back,” he argues, and Carlos hitches his hands deeper under Cecil's knees.

“How about _you_ walk back, and _I_ will take the car, like a sane person who lives a mile and a half from the synagogue?”

“But then who's going to carry me when I get tired?”

Carlos groans theatrically. Cecil giggles into his ear and kisses some weird cheek/ear combination that's all of Carlos he can reach. Then they get onto Ouroboros, and Carlos stops.

“Cecil?”

“Hm?”

“Just how many Jews are in Night Vale, anyway?”

“If you count _everybody_? Like the people who just show up on Yom Kippur?”

“Right.”

“I don't know,” Cecil confesses. “Not many? I'd guess—maybe a hundred and fifty? There are two services for all the High Holy Days services, so more than a hundred, but less than two hundred. We wouldn't all fit.”

“Okay. Explain that.” Carlos points.

The synagogue is full—past fire code, surely, Carlos sees people standing against every wall—and so is the lawn. People are filtering out of the former but staying on the latter, and there are cars lined up all down the road.

“I don't know. Wait—” Cecil lets go of Carlos with one hand, and wobbles precariously before catching his balance and pointing at a figure just inside one of the windows. “That's Roger Singh. What's he doing here?”

“Well, he was helping me stain the doors,” Carlos comments. “What do you mean, what's he doing here?”

“I mean—not that I'm ungrateful, I'm just—I'm confused, Carlos, I see all kinds of people who aren't members. Not that they're not welcome, I just—honestly, if it wasn't Friday, I'd be home sleeping after all that. We gutted a building and put it back together in _six days_. After the whole fighting against a bloated and malevolent corporate entity part.”

“It's something we took back from Strex, and they helped us,” Carlos answers. “When my crew cleaned out the lab they said they got—well, not the _same_ kind of crowd, but people who never touched a test tube in their lives were lining up to help sweep it out. People want to be near the things they've reclaimed right now.”

“As long as nobody's claiming my seat, I'm happy,” Cecil says, and although the sanctuary is jammed full with people sitting on the bimah and children lining the aisles and non-members trying to ease their way out without stepping on anybody, there are in fact two chairs in the third row next to the aisle on the left-hand side. They're mismatched—the nice padded seats that made up the Beth Shalom seating were smeared with yellow paint graffiti and other worse things and had to be ripped out en masse, and the chairs tonight are a mix of spare furniture and folding chairs—but someone has made sure Cecil has a ladderback with a cushion. Carlos guides Cecil into his chair, and they both sit. 

The rabbi stands on the bimah and raises his hands, and everyone falls magically silent. 

“We are joined tonight by friends,” he ways, and gestures toward the windows. Outside, people are standing in a silent ring. “Good friends, who have helped us in our time of need. Let us give praise tonight. Will the mothers stand?”

There are always candles for Shabbat; Carlos is used to it. 

What he isn't used to is the proliferation of Shabbat candlesticks all over the bimah, ones people hid away from Strex' sharp eyes and long fingers, glass and wood and clay and stone and old blackened silver. 

The mothers stand—take places on the bimah—recite Shabbat prayers and light candles. Carlos squeezes Cecil's hand. Cecil squeezes back.

“It's going to be different now, you know,” Cecil murmurs. Carlos nods and pulls Cecil into the ring of his arm. It's not appropriate to kiss in temple, but there's no reason they can't sit like this, at least until they have to stand.

“My dad thinks we were crazy not to leave,” he murmurs back. “I asked him if he would have.”

“What'd he say?”

“Not for diamonds.”

Cecil smiles.

“I'm glad you're here,” he says, low, into Carlos' ear. Carlos smiles back.

“Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Explanations, as promised:
> 
> Shabbat = the Jewish Sabbath, from sundown Friday evening until sundown Saturday evening.
> 
> Challah = the most delicious bread ever. It's an egg bread that's traditionally braided from three strips of dough and served at Shabbat dinner.
> 
> HaMotzi = the blessing said over challah (or any bread) to begin a meal. If you've ever seen the movie version of _Godspell_ , it's what Jesus says to start the supper in the junkyard.
> 
> Channukiah = the Hebrew version of the Yiddish word “menorah.” It's literally the exact same thing.
> 
> Matzoh = the unleavened bread-cracker-stuff eaten during Pesach. It's also often ground up and formed into balls to make matzoh ball soup.
> 
> Kippah = the Hebrew version of the Yiddish word “yarmulke.” It's that round cap Jewish men wear. (“Kippot” is the plural.)
> 
> Mitzvah = has two meanings, “a holy obligation” and “a holy gift.” The two meanings aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
> 
> Minyan = the number of adult men (men over the age of 13) required under Jewish law for certain portions of a service to be completed (it takes ten men to make a minyan). In a reform synagogue like Beth Shalom, adult women may be counted toward the minyan; some, but not all, reform synagogues may also count non-Jewish guests, as long as they are adults. (I should probably note, “at least one reform synagogue.” I attended temple as part of a minyan while not actually being a member.)
> 
> Bimah = a round, raised portion in the middle of a synagogue's sanctuary where service portions like reciting prayers and reading Torah take place. 
> 
> Tallit = Jewish prayer shawl
> 
> Parashah = the set of Torah verses to be read in a specific week. The Torah takes one year to read in a set schedule, and synagogues all over the world read the same verses in the same week.
> 
> Siddur = Jewish prayer books
> 
> Shalom = peace


End file.
